A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

ought their children along. Neither parent said a word to either Charles or Caroline during
the whole party except to say “Bye” at the end (l.3:843ff.)
I asked whether, on occasions like this where there is the potential to experience great
rejection and sadness, at the subjective level and at the moment when that sense of insult is
felt, there is strength to be drawn from the social model. Caroline replied by saying no
(l.3:971). For her the social model is something she might apply later in order to rationalise
the experience, but does not speak immediately to her emotional self. I wondered if:
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at the level… at the really personal, emotional level you‟re talking about, Caroline,
or maybe where you feel that pain, or that tiredness, that fatigue, that extra stress…
whether you feel that that is something you feel the social model is fully able to
address… (l.3:1006ff.)
Caroline‟s reply was that:
Not for me as an individual it isn‟t, no… it isn‟t… cos the thing is as a disabled
person you can be political… but most of us… certainly… I‟m speaking for myself
now… there are some days when I just want to crawl under a stone and I don‟t want
to… I don‟t want to associate myself with being a disabled person… cos I‟m sick of
the fight and I‟m sick of the battles and… because, you know, sometimes things do
get really personal… largely other people‟s attitudes… but it still has a personal
effect on your life and can sometimes make you feel shit… (l.3:1012ff.)
Even Charles, who has expressed doubt about whether an affirmative model is needed when
we have the social model, conceded that:
It‟s hard to walk through life and constantly experience shit… constantly experience
negative attitudes… and think… ah… that‟s a social barrier… (laughs…)
(l.3:1024ff.)
I do not suggest that, as a theoretical model, the affirmative model is able to do the
impossible and become incorporated as part of disabled people‟s emotional experience as
experience happens. As Van Manen states, there is a difference between being-in-the-world
as non-thematic consciousness and the processes by which we give meaning to that being:
Life experiences gather hermeneutic significance as we (reflectively) gather them by
giving memory to them. Through meditations, conversations, daydreams,